


Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)

by stickmarionette



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Childhood Sweethearts, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Slash, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 00:18:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/301665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stickmarionette/pseuds/stickmarionette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Victor's no good with words. When Andres wraps an arm around his waist, fitting himself against Victor's side, he knows he doesn't need any. It's enough for him to drape his arm around Andres' shoulder and twine their fingers together.</i></p><p>Victor and Andres being each other's strength through the years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meretricula](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meretricula/gifts).



> Title after the Florence and the Machine song. Dear V, I should have written this for you a long time ago. I hope that this makes you grin despite its tardiness.

> For my part, I can only say that since we have known each other, and looking back through the years, he has never let me down. - [Andres Iniesta on Victor Valdes](http://www.totalbarca.com/2010/interviews/victor-valdes-a-keeper-in-search-of-perfection/)

 

Victor fucks up 14 seconds into the Clasico and has to watch as the ball hits the back of his net and the Bernabeu screams its approval. Inside his head there's nothing but white noise for a long, terrifying moment. Then Puyi meets his eyes, cool and determined and looking like he could physically push reassurance into Victor, and it eases up again. He can think.

He can keep going. Shaking himself to pieces, buckling under the weight of incredibly public failure - that's for afterwards.

 

*

 

Afterwards, Pep puts his bony arms around Victor and gives him a rough squeeze instead of the dressing down he thinks he deserves.

"Sorry," Victor mumbles into the fine material of Pep's suit.

"No," Pep says firmly. Large, warm hands come up to cup Victor's face, forcing him to look up and see -

Pep smiling at him, fierce and proud. "We won because you were brave. Thank you, Victor. Thank you for being brave."

Victor nods, because he doesn't trust himself to speak. When Pep lets go, he immediately catches Andres' eye, waving him over until they're seated close, thigh to thigh.

If Victor's learned to be brave, if he's learned to look failure in the face and never stop until he beats it, then he didn't find that strength on his own.

Victor's no good with words. When Andres wraps an arm around his waist, fitting himself against Victor's side, he knows he doesn't need any. It's enough for him to drape his arm around Andres' shoulder and twine their fingers together.

For him, this has always and will always mean _strength, Victor. I believe in you._

 

\-------

 

For the longest time, Victor associated strength with the sight of Andoni Zubizarreta standing tall in front of the Barca goal. _When I'm older, I'll be like that._ Big and strong and able to stand in front of the goalmouth at Camp Nou and fill it up.

Not even 1994 could change that.

He remembers thinking - when the heaving sobs had stopped - that being able to stare defeat and failure in the face like that was its own kind of strength, and worth learning in its own way.

 

*

 

Victor had been back at La Masia for a few months when the new kid turned up. He was young, younger than everybody else in Victor's room, and for a while Victor assumed that was why he was so quiet.

That was before he started hearing sniffling from the top bunk.

It went on for a week while Victor was trapped by his own indecision like an idiot, unsure whether he should say or do anything, not wanting to make things worse than they already were. Thankfully, Thiago, Mikel and Pepe were all deep sleepers, and their beds were far enough away that they hadn't noticed a thing.

Victor could guess what the problem was. A lot of new kids were homesick, especially if they were young and had never lived apart from their parents before. He'd always been dismissive of it - if they really wanted to play for Barca, then they should just deal - but with _this_ new kid, he wasn't so sure.

The kid's name was Andres Iniesta, and he was small, pale, and kind of awkward looking. Or at least Victor thought that right up until he saw him play. Then he couldn't imagine ever using _awkward_ to describe Andres again. He wasn't the only one who thought so, either; people at La Masia weren't easily impressed, and yet Victor could hardly mention Andres without hearing someone rave about how good he was.

Not just good - imaginative. Fearless.

So maybe someone like that was allowed to miss home.

Victor couldn't imagine telling anyone about his train of thought. Pepe would probably punch his shoulder and congratulate him on making progress towards acquiring real boy feelings, which wouldn't be at all helpful for the decision he had to make.

In the second week, Victor paid more attention to Andres, and noticed that he wasn't eating properly either. After that, when he heard the unmistakeable sound of muffled sobs again, a few hours after lights out, the right thing to do became blatantly obvious.

"Andres. Hey, Andres," he whispered.

The sobs cut off. "Sorry. Sorry, I - I'll be quiet."

"No, for God's sake, that's not what I - " Victor winced. Stopped, modulated his tone and volume. "Come down here."

"What?"

"You heard me. Don't worry, the other three pigs here sleep so deeply that you'd have to throw shoes to wake them up."

Andres was so still that Victor couldn't even hear him breathing. For a long moment, he wondered if he'd just made an absolute fool of himself.

"Okay."

"Come here. Lie down. God, your feet are freezing."

"Sorry."

"Stop saying that. Just - come here."

In the dark, it took a fair bit of shuffling around and hitting each other with stray limbs to fit them both on Victor's narrow bunk. But once they had it all worked out, Andres fit against him perfectly.

Somehow, Victor had known that he would.

"You're going to be fine, okay? Don't - don't give up on making it work here."

Andres' hand found his and held on. When he spoke again, he sounded stronger, like the person Victor had seen on the football pitch. "I wouldn't. I'd never."

"Good."

 

*

 

The next morning, Pepe shot Victor a knowing grin, but he knew better than to say anything, which was a refreshing change. Almost as good as the fact that Andres was eating properly again, and no longer had such scary black circles around his eyes.

He began to smile off the pitch as well as on it. Mostly at Victor, a fact he tried and failed not to feel smug about.

A month after that, Andres missed dinner. It was the day after parental visits, and those were always hard. Victor spent half of his own meal looking around, trying not to look worried, and sneakily saving food. If the sly looks Thiago kept giving him were any indication, he was doing a really bad job of not attracting attention.

Victor high-tailed it out of the dining room as soon as he could. He found Andres curled up in a mountain of blankets in Victor's bunk, still and silent, his skin cold to the touch.

It reminded Victor of himself after painful losses, the way he'd want to sit there and not move for as long as the world would let him. The last time Andres had found Victor like that, he'd sat down beside him on the floor and kept him company until Victor could talk again.

The memory carried its own warmth. Victor reached for Andres' hand beneath the blanket, held it in a vice grip between his own.

"Hey."

"Hey."

"I saved you some bread. Eat."

"Thanks," Andres said, muffled by the pillow, and somehow Victor could still hear the smile in it.

 

*

 

La Masia taught him everything. How to win, how to lose, how to play. It took Andres to show him what strength was, what it could mean in ways completely different to what he'd always thought. That lesson lasted, even after they made it into the first team - a fractured, young team, coming together after years of frustration and failure, ready for change.

It was his second _Clasico_ , his first in the Bernabeu. If they won - if they finally, finally beat Madrid again - they could overtake them in the table, consolidate second place. Frank had them believing everything was possible. All around Victor, the older players looked calm and determined. Xavi and Lucho were even smiling.

Victor was scared shitless.

Beside him, Andres nudged his chest with an elbow. "Strength, Victor," he said in an undertone. "You'll be brilliant, I know it."

Victor swallowed hard, let his heart settle. Turned to look Andres in the eye. "You and me, Andres."

"I'm not playing," Andres said, quiet and matter-of-fact.

"Maybe not this year. But soon you will. Together, yeah?"

"Yeah."

 

 _…when we finished the final at Wembley, I thought about those talks with Andres. The Final at Wembley was the greatest day, the most beautiful thing I’ve experienced. Not only because we won the Champions League, but also because of the rival and the stadium. And finally because Andres and I managed to fulfill our dream._ \- [Victor Valdes, 2011](http://www.totalbarca.com/2011/interviews/valdes-it-was-our-dream/)

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. For more on the most recent Clasico (Real 1 - 3 Barca) and Valdes' mentality, [this article is excellent](http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/dec/12/victor-valdes-barcelona-real-madrid).
> 
> 2\. Barca lost the 1994 Champions League final to AC Milan 4-0. Aside from being the death knell of Cruyff's Dream Team, it was also the beginning of the end for goalkeeping legend Andoni Zubizarreta at Barca. (Zubi eventually returned in 2010 as Barca's technical director and was able to watch Victor Valdes win the Champions League at Wembley in a green jersey, which Victor wore as a tribute to him.)
> 
> 3\. Puyi is Carles Puyol, Lucho is Luis Enrique. Victor and Andres' room mates were Mikel Arteta, Thiago Motta and Pepe Reina.
> 
> 4\. Victor left La Masia for a few years when his parents moved to Tenerife and came back again in 1995. Andres Iniesta joined in 1996.
> 
> 5\. Andres really was horribly homesick when he first moved to La Masia. But he toughed it out with the help of his new friends and the rest, as they say, is history.
> 
> 6\. Some believe that the 03/04 Clasico at the Bernabeu was when Victor Valdes really came into his own as Barca's main 'keeper. The game, which Barca won 1-2 (the first time they'd beaten Madrid away for 7 seasons, which is a fun reminder of how things were in Barca's years in the wilderness), marked a turning point in the fortunes of Rijkaard's team. Andres Iniesta was an unused substitute.


End file.
